First of all, it never questions the reasons of the war.

Why must a film question the war? I've seen films that question the war, and frankly they're polemical and insulting, even when I agreed with them.

From the very beginning it pushes the audience towards sympathy for the American soldier,

Why is it wrong to feel sympathy for the American soldier? How does that mitigate the conduct of the Iraq war? Is the American soldier not in a sympathetic situation? Remarque had sympathy for the German soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front, was he justifying the Wehrmacht?

the audience is pushed to stand on the hunter side instead of the hunted, to worry about the danger that Baghdad's alleys pose for the soldiers instead of the danger that the soldiers pose for anyone else around them

Were the dangers in Baghdad's alleys imaginary? Granting they weren't, why would you feel such a fact makes a positive argument for the Iraq War? Just because an insurgent in Sadr City kidnaps Our Boys does not imply that it's okay to shoot up the neighborhood, nor does it justify or even quality in moral terms the invasion of Iraq. Quite the opposite.

Did you want some scene where Renner starts crying and shouts into the sky "Damn you George Bush! Why are we here!" I think what you wanted was an escape clause to avoid having to accept moral culpability, a way of being able to tell yourself that the Iraq war was SOMEONE ELSE'S problem and your SUPERIOR moral sense would never lead you to do what Renner or Anthony Mackie's character do, despite the fact that good, smart people, doing everything in their power to save their own lives and do right by their God and their fellow man, still commit atrocities.

Yeah of course you identify with the guys in the situation, and yeah the guys are Americans. But the war is bigger than anything they might experience and the good guys and bad guys in that film, like in Renoir, all have their reasons. I think you make the error of assuming that Renner's character is meant to be a positive role model, when the film never really affirms that reading, and in many circumstances undercuts it. Yes, he knows how to defuse bombs and he's hardcore about it, but I don't think that makes him or his POV privileged with regard to the text -- IMHO the film is extremely careful on that point.

Truffaut once said that all war movies are pro-war, and that's true in one way: they make soldiering look bad-ass. But there's a lot more to a war than soldiering.

Ask yourself: do you remember the name of a single Iraqi character in the movie?

Professor Nabib. The soccer ball kid called himself "Beckham." The translators had no names. (You're asking someone who, despite having not watched it in a year, has probably seen the movie probably more than 200 times, in various states of completion.)

A factor is that if you commit a crime, the laws in effect at the time of the illegal act are the laws under which you may be prosecuted. At least that's how federal laws work in the US. You can't do something, and then, ex post facto, the legislature changes the laws to make the act legal or illegal -- they can make something legal, but that doesn't relieve your liability, though in criminal cases you'd usually get a pardon...

The less people talk about Voltage Picture's movies, the less Voltage exists.

I believe this is called the Tinkerbell Effect.

You're totally entitled to your opinion.

However, "It sucks" isn't a persuasive argument. Congratulations on the "waste of electricity" crack, you must be Really Smart, but that doesn't make your case either.

It's almost as if people don't even want to talk about the movie, they just want to use an opinion of it to signal their peer group inclusion or something. NAH, that can't be it.

Yeah but I've been reading people dig on HL for weeks now leading up to ZD30's release, I'm fed up! :)

with a very apologetic view on that unholy mess that the Iraqi War still is. leaving middle-class, Democrat-prone audience with a reassuring feeling that "we did not screw up THAT much in the end...".

What makes you say that? How did you feel the film mitigated the cause or conduct of the war?

I hate how the "new cinema" makes movies and things that have no plot and bash anyone that doesn't "get it" as being the one with the problem.

It's not very new, the structure of the film is what you'd call episodic or maybe picaresque. It's certainly attested in Kubrick (viz. Barry Lyndon, and the 250 year old book it's based on), and even earlier works like Sullivan's Travels or many, many C. B. DeMille spectacle films. Also, using some perceived slight from a bunch of film critics as an excuse for not liking a film is pathetic. Remember, film critics are usually the ones who tell you you "don't get it," not filmmakers.

Your criticism is a recurring one but I think the real problem is that people find the Renner character to be inaccessible. Not a cypher -- he's clearly smart and motivated -- but some audiences have difficulty accepting that what motivates him is sorta closed-off, and I think a big part of "getting" the movie is the process you go through trying to figure him out. He's a true chaotic neutral and that seems to rub people the wrong way, they really would prefer a typical protagonist who either comes with a clear motivation or leaves with one.

You can read Renner's character, in this way, as symbolic or analogous to America's motivation in the Iraq war in general - I like this reading, but I in no way represent it as Kathryn's intent. For that, a place you might start is by reading the quote she uses at the beginning, and then reading the book it comes from, War is a Force the Gives Us Meaning.

JJ Abrams is doing nothing that wasn't done 2500 years ago in Greece.

With all due respect, Aristophanes wasn't ruining the Kirk/Spock/McCoy relationship in the service of creating shallow popcorn movies.

To be honest, the Rotten Tomatoes reviewer sounds like the sort of convention-bound scold that's been ruining movies for a decade now with corporate focus-group storylines dumbed down for a room-temperature IQ audience.

Fair Disclosure: I was a sound effects editor on Hurt Locker and my supervisor won two Oscars.

The proper FTFY for the statement is:

"We try pretty hard to make our users be available as widely as we can to our adwords partners. That's our philosophy. I think sometimes we're allowed to do that. Sometimes we're not."

And there is no phone reception or water

A good reason not to use any cell phone for navigation in this instance.

Protip: Your map isn't on the phone.

Oooh you've got the lost verse of Monty Python's Philosopher's Song

Oh what Nietzsche couldn't teach'ya 'bout the raising of the wrists! Socrates Himself was Permanently Pissed!

Apple doesn't need to sue, they just need to add a few Core* frameworks every year like they always do. GnuStep replicates the OSX/iOS Foundation and AppKit libraries. That's really good, but their API hasn't kept up with Apple's block/closure idioms or libdispatch, almost all new code being written on the Mac today uses these. Also, while they've done the lord's work with their own CoreData, just about every new application these days links against at least AddressBook.framework and CoreAnimation -- it's hard to find even an FTP client on the Mac that doesn't use animated transitions.

Apple's never used DRM on their OS, they've just kept the upgrades coming and make sure developers start using them -- in exchange Apple aggressively markets its OS upgrades to its userbase, so developers don't lose their users becuase they don't upgrade. That's where MS failed in the end, people fell off the upgrade carousel, developers stopped chasing new Win APIs... This was Joel Spolsky's point when he argued that MS had failed as a platform company.

Natch', the concept of "economic majority" is extremely nebulous and in any event almost completely based on transaction volume. If you make a thousand 5 cent transactions a day, you get that many votes on wether or not you're using X network to sign off on your blocks. OTOH, if you have a million dollars in BTC but only trade once a month (or even better, you have a future contract denominated in BTC, like hosting contract or a promissory note), you get almost no vote at all.

Decisions made by the UN are enforced on member nations.

How?

Tinpot dictatorships hate the Internet for the same reasons global superpowers like the US or Russia hate the UN.

The Internet looks decentralized but in practice it works to extend the economic and cultural hegemony of the incumbent operators; The UN looks decentralized but in practice it's really a mechanism for small countries to enjoin and harry large, powerful ones on an equal footing.